


seijuku

by lacksley



Category: Free!
Genre: Coming of Age, Crying, Family, Friendship, Gen, Identity Issues, Magical Artifacts, Merpeople, Miscommunication, Mythical Beings & Creatures, The Tail of Emily Windsnap - freeform, Trick or Treat 2017, sartorial mishaps, there is makoharu if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-22 07:59:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12476948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lacksley/pseuds/lacksley
Summary: (maturation)The blue waves pulse against the sand, hypnotic, inviting. It looks fun. He wants to touch it, he wants to dive in and know what it feels like.Snapshots of a boy growing up with a secret that's unknown even to him.





	seijuku

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Liviania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liviania/gifts).



A bright summer day leaves the third grade class of Iwatobi Elementary sweating and hot, and a small group of boys conspires to jump in the ocean after school before their parents can scold them about sunscreen and swimming trunks. A pale boy with dark hair that almost shines blue in the sunlight follows along with his two friends, not really paying attention to the chatter of the other boys. He is very warm, and the ocean looks very cold and inviting, the smell of salt blowing in on a nicely cool breeze.

_ “Haruka, remember. Never swim in the ocean, it’s very dangerous.” _

The boy remembers his mother’s words, repeated weekly and sometimes  _ daily  _ as she scrubs his head on his way out the door to school, as he eyes the shimmering blue water. The waves are small and calm, and gulls shriek as they soar and dive in the air.

The small group reaches the rocky beach, the younger ones eagerly shedding their shoes and shirts to jump straight into the surf and shriek at the cold water. Nagisa is one of them, laughing as he chases one of his classmates with a damp clump of seaweed that washed up. Makoto and Haruka hang back, pretending to be dignified. They  _ are _ in the third grade, after all; they aren’t going to jump around like a bunch of silly second graders.

Makoto pulls off his shoes and socks and walks to the edge of the gentle waves, shivering as the cold water brushes against his bare feet. Haruka sits down on a driftwood log and carefully unties his shoes, slipping them off and placing his socks inside. The damp sand feels strange against his feet, but not bad. Haruka has never been barefoot on the beach before. His mother always kept him away, because she always told him the ocean was dangerous.

The sparkling water didn’t seem dangerous at all, Haruka thinks. The other boys are just fine, splashing around up to their knees. Even Makoto has moved out a little farther, inching towards Nagisa and his other second-grade friends. The blue waves pulse against the sand, hypnotic,  _ inviting. _ It looks fun. He wants to touch it, he wants to dive in and know what it  _ feels like. _

He steps towards the water.

“Haruka! Come here this instant!” His mother’s shout scares him backwards, stumbling on the sand to grab his shoes and school bag and make a beeline for the sound of her voice. She scolds him all the way home and his ears and cheeks burn bright red with shame. He doesn’t want to argue with his mother, but he holds the thought inside him like a secret. _The ocean can’t be dangerous._ _It can’t be._

 

Time passes, and Haruka never forgets the way the ocean called to him. He is allowed to join the Iwatobi Swim Club with Makoto on one condition: he must always wear the bracelet his grandmother made for him when he was a baby, and never take it off no matter what. Haruka has never seen it before, but his mother pulls it out of a box filled with his baby things and the sight of it sends a chill through his entire body. It’s a handmade thing, formed from dried sinew and bone, adorned with a series of shells so white they almost seem to glow, and pieces of sea glass polished to a shine. It looks heavy in his mother’s hands, but when she fastens it to his left wrist he feels the weight not in his arm, but in his heart, and Haruka understands that this is a price he is paying, to swim.

He leaves for his first class with strict instructions to come home straight afterwards and a reinforcement of his mother’s favorite rule:  _ no swimming in the ocean. _

The class ends before he even has a chance to really feel out the pool, but Coach Sasabe lets him stay with Makoto for a little longer while the other classes finish and the building closes down for the night. Haruka goes to bed dreaming of the way the water felt on his skin, how it embraced him like an old friend and he felt like he was  _ home. _

 

In middle school, Haruka joins the swim team with Makoto. His parents are proud of him, but they never go to any of his meets. He swims as long as he can, as much as possible, but there’s just something not  _ right. _ Haruka dreams about the water, swimming deep in the ocean and he never needs to come up for air, never gets tired, never needs to go home because the ocean  _ is  _ his home. It feels more natural than breathing air, more instinctual than walking, and every time he wakes there’s a sense of longing for something he’s never quite felt. There’s something holding him back, a resistance weighing him down. He goes to school every morning wondering what it could possibly be.

In his second year, a group of third years decide to tease him about his grandmother’s bracelet, cornering him behind the school. The cold hand that closes around his wrist, nails digging into the sinew, feels like it is clawing right in his heart, and Haruka cries out in pain. The older boys spit the word “freak” at him like an insult as they run away, and a small thought forms in Haruka’s mind:  _ “Why?” _

He leaves swim practice early that day, shaky and out of breath and feeling like he has been punched in the chest. He waves away Makoto’s concern, like he always does, and goes home with that thought bouncing around in his head.

Haruka asks his mother  _ why, _ why he has to wear the bracelet his grandmother made him.  _ Why  _ his grandmother made it for him.  _ Why _ he’s not allowed in the ocean, even now that he’s learned how to swim.

“Because your father and I said so.” Her face is stone, a mountain set firm to the water lapping at its base. “Go wash up for dinner.”

He looks his mother in the eyes, rising to his feet, and tears off the bracelet made of shells and sea glass. Haruka throws it to the ground, as hard as he can, and runs out the door.

Straight into Makoto, who stands outside on the stoop. Haruka doesn’t say anything, just takes the boy’s hand and runs, to wherever his feet will take him. They end up at the edge of the pool in the Iwatobi Swim Club, panting and wheezing from their long run.

“Haru,” Makoto gasps. “What’s going on? What happened?” Tears sting at Haruka’s eyes, fingernails biting into his palms. 

“I tried to ask them why I can’t—I can’t swim in the ocean, but they won’t tell me  _ why _ .” Makoto tries to fumble out an answer, still dazed by their quick dash across town, but Haruka doesn’t wait for him to finish, pulling off his shirt and diving into the pool. He lets himself sink to the bottom, embracing the smooth darkness of the water. It feels different this time, his tears mixing with the chlorine and somehow it’s like his dreams. He’s never felt this way before, so natural and surrounded and at  _ peace _ . Haruka closes his eyes and breathes in deeply, immersing himself in the feeling of the water.

He has read about sensory deprivation tanks, and wonders if this is what they feel like. His limbs have gone fuzzy, like they aren’t really attached to him anymore. There’s nothing holding Haruka back. He’s free. He’s pulled to the surface by strong arms and Makoto calling his name.

“You were under for so long, I thought…” Makoto trails off, eyes focused at some point below Haruka’s. “Haru, your neck…” His fingers find smooth ridges along the sides of his neck where flat skin used to be, smoothly pulsing in time with his breathing. Haruka pulls his hands away in shock and catches sight of his hands. Thin blue-tinged translucent skin has formed a webbing between his fingers. Makoto yelps and splashes away from him.

“Something touched my leg!” Haruka instinctively peers into the water, and that’s when he sees it. His legs are gone, replaced by a shimmering blue-white tail, covered in scales and gracefully undulating to keep his head above the surface. He stares for a long time at the swishing graceful sparkling  _ tail _ that has swallowed him up to his hipbones, and notices that something is missing.

“Where are my pants?”

They both look down to see torn shreds drifting at the bottom of the pool, and burst out laughing.

“Did you know?” Makoto asks. Haruka shakes his head.

“No. My parents never told me.” They swim to the shallow end, and Makoto helps Haruka sit on the edge, both young men watching the tail lazily stroke through the water.

“Do you know how to change back? Can you?”

“I don’t know,” Haruka says. They share a look of mutual panic. Haruka can’t go home like this, if  _ this  _ is the very thing his parents were hiding from him. Makoto runs into the locker rooms and returns with an armful of towels.

“You changed when you got wet, so maybe you need to get dry to change back?” The kind smile Makoto gives him fills Haruka with immeasurable fondness, and together they work to scrub every last drop of water from his skin until the scales decay into a pile of salt around his legs, unblemished and the same as they were only twenty minutes ago.

“I still don’t have pants.” Makoto laughs and runs back to the locker rooms, returning with a ITSC jammer.

 

Haruka enters the living room with damp hair and a ITSC jammer to find his parents waiting for him. He doesn’t have to say anything, because they know. And now he knows too.

“Haruka,” his father starts. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you. We were trying to protect you.” Haruka says nothing. His eyes flit between his parents, the concern on his mother’s face, the way his father’s hands are white-knuckled on the armrests of his wheelchair. He sits at the table and waits for them to explain. His father starts by slipping off the wristwatch on his left hand. It shimmers and transforms into a bracelet much like Haruka’s own, and under the blanket on his lap a navy blue fish tail unfolds where his feet used to be.

“I was born in the ocean.”

That’s how it begins, the long story of his father’s youth and how his parents met. A merman, royalty from the deep ocean, fell in love with a human woman. He brought the wrath of his father the king when he chose her over his duty, and together they escaped. Haruka’s grandmother fashioned his father a necklace that would hide his tail and let him live on land with his beloved. Haruka listens, patiently, as his parents get caught up in the details of their lives before he was born, and his resentment fades.

“If you were to enter the ocean, my father would try to take you away from us,” his father says. “ A half-mer child is an abomination in his eyes. That’s why we kept you away.” The truth weighs heavy on his heart, more than the bracelet that hides him from humans, more than the word “freak” the third years called him.

He isn’t human.

“So what now,” Haruka asks, hands beginning to shake. “What happens now that I know?”

“Oh, Haruka, we didn’t mean to hurt you, we just wanted to keep you safe.” His mother looks like she might cry.

“You could have  _ told _ me,” he whispers. He can’t meet their eyes. The ultimate betrayal by his parents, upending his very identity, for  _ safety? _ Haruka wants to scream at them, spit fire and destroy the house and make them realize how much this  _ hurts. _ They don’t say anything in response and he leaves the living room. He doesn’t want to think about this, as though cocooning himself in blankets will drive the thoughts away.  _ What if Makoto hates him now? _ He falls asleep to dream of a typhoon, strong winds whipping him up and carrying him far far away.

 

School is nerve-wracking. Haruka feels eyes on him everywhere, as though they could somehow see inside him and  _ know. _ He’s been blending in his whole life, unaware of his secret, but now it feels like the most obvious thing in the world.

“Haru, are you okay? You look distracted.” Makoto lightly touches his arm.

“Do you hate me?” he asks his lunchbox.

“Haru…” He looks up at Makoto. There isn’t a trace of disgust in his face. “I don’t hate you. I told you, didn’t I? I love swimming and Haru-chan.”

Haruka instantly feels silly. They’d known each other since they were babies, Makoto was  _ there  _ when it happened. He’d helped him dry off, he’d brought him a spare swimsuit, and so many other little things over the years that Haruka had taken for granted.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, and Makoto gives him a smile in return.

“It’s going to be just fine. I’m with you all the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> This kind of took a life of its own, but I hope you like it anyways! Big thanks to [rosefox](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefox/pseuds/rosefox) and [Pugglemuggle ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Pugglemuggle) for being such wonderful betas, and to the Yuletide discord server for the countless word wars! This was my first trick or treat exchange and it was super fun! I love mermaids and I took a lot of inspiration from "The Tail of Emily Windsnap", which features another half-mermaid protagonist. I would imagine a lot of what happens during the climax is after the events of the Starting Days movie.


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